3/30/2017

It seems Warner Bros. is again very serious about their live-action Akira movie. They've been working at it for years and have come close once, but something, usually budget related, always gets in the way. A few days ago Daniel Espinosa (Life) and David Sandberg (Lights Out, incoming Shazam director) were named as contenders, but a more exciting choice has emerged; Get Out director Jordan Peele.

The news comes from Jeff Sneider at The Tracking Board, who is also the guy who dropped the info about Espinosa and Sandberg. He says Warner Bros. is really "enamored" with Peele after his small-budget "social thriller" Get Out busted more than $150M on a budget of about $4M. They like him so much they'd probably let him rewrite Marco Ramirez's script.

So how serious is this? Supposedly the talks with Peele have been "encouraging" but nothing is in place. This could all amount to a lot of smoke, but the thought of Peele on a big-budget project like Akira is interesting at least, if only because the previous version Warner Bros. attempted was a classic case of "white-washing" with Garrett Hedlund set to take on a character who was Japanese. Peele would likely change all of that to be more culturally sensitive and faithful to the material.